this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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I think everyone can agree that child safety is important. But the fact internet as it stands is not safe for kids is completely undeniable.
As always, however, censorship is not the solution, especially not if it's headed by government. I'm honestly not sure what the solution is.
We've had an answer since the Internet was created: don't let kids have unsupervised access to it.
Instead we give toddlers tablets before they can read.
It's inconsequential anyway. This bill was never really about kids in the first place.
Also we need to acknowledge that age appropriate freedom for some ages of children means they get hurt sometimes. A 16 year old should have access to their town unsupervised for certain lengths of time. Most will be fine. Some will get hurt. Those without this freedom will have to learn how to function in that environment as an adult and are at similar risk of being hurt then because they’re stunted in that way.
What we’ve been doing with the internet is the equivalent of never telling children about the dangers of their local area, what danger looks like, or how to get help if you’re in danger then letting 8 year olds wander around town without even checking in.
Some of these freedoms are important. Things we may want to censor for good reason can give children the words to know what isn’t ok in their lives. That can range from “my parents shouldn’t be fighting all the time actually” to “this aspect of my body/mind is a symptom of something to check out” to “that adult shouldn’t behave that way to me” to “this aspect of me is actually a perfectly fine but uncommon trait”.
The current internet is a funhouse mirror of reality for dopamine. When I was a kid we all knew movies were that. So we were taught what the idealized underweight for the time looked like and how unhealthy it was.
I wholeheartedly endorse things like mandatory internet safety training in schools. Much like I think health classes should teach what a healthy and normal body looks like and can do. I tentatively endorse a way to set age recommendations and reasons so blockers can keep the 7 year olds away from porn, though I fear it will result in queer kids being blocked from factual information and teenagers being prevented from accessing good sex ed resources before making decisions regarding their sexual health.
Censorship has a cost to everyone, and maybe mid moral panic isn’t the time to decide to censor things
Precisely! Modernized, relevant internet safety courses! The current systems, at least what I've experienced, have really amounted to "don't talk to strange people in chat rooms" and I...
Oh.
Privacy, basic propaganda and media literacy and skepticism, what online grooming is and what it looks like, what online scams are and how to detect them, what parasocial relationships are, basic cybersecurity, stuff like that. As I see it it’s more about stopping the alt right pipeline, scammers, and how to engage socially without falling prey to predators.